Monday | April 29, 2002 7:00 pm

The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
(Die Tausend Augen des Dr. Mabuse)

Screening on Film

Directed by Fritz Lang.
With Dawn Addams, Peter van Eyck, Gert Fröbe.
West Germany/France/Italy, 1960, 35mm, black & white, 104 min.
German with English subtitles.

Lang’s final directorial exercise revives an old acquaintance from the 1920s and 1930s: Dr. Mabuse. The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse updates Lang’s criminal mastermind in the context of postwar Germany and a dawning media age. The unseen but omniscient doctor monitors the rooms of a vast hotel with hidden cameras and microphones and passes on orders to a vast network of minions. Like M, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, and Hangmen Also Die!, the film features a memorable inspector: a rotund and wily police commissioner (Gert Fröbe, who would go on to play the title role in Goldfinger) who is hard pressed to solve the series of mysterious crimes committed by the elusive mastermind.